In advance of a public meeting scheduled for December 12 in Washington D.C., the U.S. Department of Commerce is seeking public comment from all interested stakeholders on the issue of first sale doctrine and digital files, including ebooks. Comments are due on or before November 13.

Black Elk Speaks has been published by three different publishers in the U.S. The rarity that this movement creates is the availability of different editions of the book from different publishers. That is, there is a semblance of competition in the publishing of Black Elk Speaks. This anomaly brings into relief the normal effects of the copyright monopoly. It offers an opportunity to reflect on what alternatives to the strict publishing monopoly might look like.

Global information services company Swets this month launched a new service to help academic libraries pay and manage article processing charges (APC) on an institutional scale. The move comes in response to a sharp increase in fee-based open access publishing in the United Kingdom.

All of the Big Six publishers are now working with libraries on ebook lending in some capacity, but pricing and licensing terms remain unfavorable in many cases, Saturday’s “ALA, Ebooks, and Digital Content: What’s Next?” panel at the 2013 ALA Annual Conference and Exhibition in Chicago concluded. Meanwhile, concerns about long-term preservation of ebooks and […]

AcademicPub launched “Off The Shelf,” a new component of its Custom College Plus course pack publishing solution that will help institutions maximize the value of their existing licensing arrangements with journals, databases, and other content providers.

Libraries and Friends groups interested in reselling or giving away used ebooks or other digital content files (or purchasing them) may be a little more cautious after the March 30 court decision, Capitol Records v. ReDigi Inc. ReDigi, a virtual marketplace for “pre-owned” digital music, was sued by Capitol Records in what the court characterized as “a fundamental clash over culture, policy, and copyright law.”

This country’s fascinating and invaluable patrimony of recorded sound and culture is at risk. Libraries, archives, museums, and historical societies have approximately 46 million recordings in their collections and more than six million are “in need” or “in urgent need” of preservation, according to the National Recording Preservation Plan released by the Library of Congress (LC) in December. The condition of another 20 million of the recordings is unknown, and these numbers do not include important material in private hands.

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) last week appointed Dan Cohen as its founding Executive Director. LJ caught up with him to discuss his work as Director of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, and his plans for DPLA.